3 to go.
Finished my first exam. I’ve got a final and two 10-page papers left. I think I did pretty good: somewhere between an 85 and a 95, I’d say. In the long essay section, I wrote a real zinger of an essay, followed by a ho-hum attempt, so we’ll see where “acceptable” hangs out.
No. I don’t mean this service. I mean me. I’m not too good with the blogging technique. Either I drown you with a book, or I don’t say nuthin at all. Life’s been busy for me, so I ha’n’t said anything at all.
My excuse? I have a mid-term tonight. I think I’m going to do pretty good, but it’s a bit unnerving, since I haven’t taken any tests for a year, and the last one I took, I bombed. (40 hours really is the max while part-timing it as a student.)
I keep running across things every day that I could blog about, but I usually get it out of my system by talking, and then there’s an end to that. For instance, my sister had her stepson semi-kidnapped last Friday. He’s back now. Everybody’s “happy.”
Other news: be sure and check out the Jolly Blogger (not to be confused with Jolly Roger, like I did for months). He’s about to convert us all to classic Presbyterianism by sheer grace and reasonableness. (Trans.: read him. He’s got some really good stuff to say.)
For myself, I will try to be a better blogger as I can. We should be switching over to the new site some time in January. All we’re waiting on is for Valerie to finish the banner at the top (It’s a beautiful picture–just not web ready yet.)
Blessings!
About seven years ago, I left hearth and home and moved a thousand miles away to go to a ministry school and be a member of the only church in the world that was doing it right. By “doing it right,” I don’t mean that I expected everybody in my new church to be sinless. I mean that I expected the church not to hesitate in pursuit of the glory of God. I was convinced that the biggest flaw in any given congregation was that either the leadership, or the congregation as a whole, was unwilling to make the radical decisions necessary to become the kind of people God wanted us to be. Where I was going, there was a unanimous agreement to make those kinds of wholehearted decisions.
I got burned out.
Actually, it’s not quite as simple as it sounds. Continue reading “In Search for a Paradigm (part 2)”
I’ve discovered something. People don’t comment here when I say something particularly profound. Or at least, they don’t comment when I talk about something esoteric and theoretical. The only assurance I have of a good readership happens when I talk about making a fool of myself.
Fortunately for all of us, I’m in no danger of letting up on the foolishness. Continue reading “In Search for a Paradigm”
I love coffee. Especially the kind with lots of sugar in it.
I love the *taste* of caffeinated beverages. I can tell the difference in taste between de-caf and caffeine.
Unfortunately, I also hate the *effects* of caffeine.
I had a grande frappuccino this morning on the way to work. Oh how wonderful it is to get your weekly expense allowance, and leave home in time to stop at the drug store and pick up a nice frozen coffee. And how nice especially it is to get a drink large enough that, if you sip it slowly enough, there’s enough to carry the half finished candy-in-a-cup into the office with you. And how *urban* it feels to sit in the meeting room, in your nice clothes, and discuss the joys of publicly drinking cofee.
And how unpleasant it is to so quickly feel the effects of a well-caffeinated bevarage.
I can already feel my blood pressure rising…
Things are fragile right now for me.
I’m not really sure what that means, even as I’m saying it. My situation itself is remarkably stable. Overcommitted, but stable. I’m earning a very decent living wage, if not one that reflects the assumed value of my degree. If I’d gone to school for the money, I would have gotten an IS degree, with a minor in web design. My church has finally decided to become what I have hoped they would be for over a year now. My current “recreational reading” is a 1200 page theology textbook. I’m on page 120 after three days. Things are steadily moving in the direction that it seems to me they ought to go.
Yet it is my nature to fluctuate between the worlds. It is especially when I am most free in the temporal world that I feel most inclined to fade into the eternal world. I am, and ever will be, a reluctant mystic.
So I find that I am fading, like I am drifting off into sleep. Except I’m not so often asleep. It was Edgar Allen Poe who said that those “who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night,” and that’s about as good a summation as any of how I feel sometimes. Especially lately.
In the last few days, I have been feeling more and more aware of… something. Perhaps the Lord is moving. Moving on me, moving in me, moving around me, or through me—I don’t know. But… moving. Or perhaps I am only feeling. People do that sometimes. Wake up in the middle of the night… feeling… not even feeling what, but… feeling. I guess people do that sometimes.
Two days in a row now, I’ve woken up feeling as though I had done some terrible crime—and I had only just woken up. How many evil things can you do in the 15 minute’s space between getting up and taking a shower? Perhaps it’s some evil heinous attack by demons, trying to catch me off guard and throw off my life. Or, again, it could be me. I’ve been getting over my yearly cold this week, and it has been most unpleasant and most sleep depriving. Perhaps getting lack of sleep combined with improper medication can combine to simulate the sensations of mortal guilt. Stranger things have happened.
Or perhaps my experience is simply the normal result of the confrontation between an increasing awareness of a holy God and my own convalescent spirituality.
Much as I’ve been enjoying slogging through my theology textbook, I keep running into the oddest sorts of conflicts. Like this quote: “Different theologians and segments of Christianity have suggested various answers as to what is the abiding element in Christianity: (1) an institution, (2) acts of God, (3) experiences, (4) doctrines, (5) a way of life.” Of course, every element of Christianity tends to at least acknowledge all of these elements, but simply tends to emphasize one of them as the “key” aspect of Christianity, like feathers are the defining element for birds. I looked through that list of options and thought that my own preference would be whichever one our Covenant fit under. My Christianity is a direct expression of a highly defined relationship between me (and also us) and my God. However, I’m not all that certain which of the above categories that is, or even if the Covenant fits under any of them at all.
I suppose that dilemma is a direct result of the whole “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship” creed. I don’t know if I could summarize my position quite so clearly, but it would involve a much greater emphasis on the subjective. Not Kierkegaard’s subjectivity, which insisted that a person felt passion on a subject in inverse proportion to the objective reality of that subject. I don’t believe that the most important things are the ones that are least likely to be proven. I do believe that the things that are the most real to a person are the things that they have the most direct contact with. To a child raised in deep space, gravity seems a very ephemeral thing.
In the same way, while it is absolutely true (and I suppose, important) that God is Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent, it’s much more compelling to consider the fact that He is also El Roi, the God who sees, not only everything, but also me, in my situation; He is El Shaddai, the overwhelming, almighty God; He is Jehovah-Shammah, not so much everywhere as *right here*.
In these cases, it is not so much that the subjective is more *true* than the objective, as it is that the subjective is more *concrete*.
Honestly, I’ve just been wanting to say that phrase for a long time. I heard that Al Sharpton made the claim that Jesus was a Liberal during the Democratic National Convention, but I can’t find a proper link. Nevertheless, it’s true: Jesus *was* a liberal, given the proper definition of “liberal”:
Or try this: opposed to the establishment.
Of course, this begs the question of whether *Democrats* are liberals, since it seems that they’re more likely to be limited to “established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes,” since it seems to me that recently the Republicans have been the ones coming out with more non-traditional and experimental ideas and the Democrats who have been opposing them by authoritarian means. But:
Jesus was a liberal, by the generic definition. Hey, “liberal” means “free” and it was Jesus Christ who said “the truth will set you free.”
Let’s see, Jesus:
and
All in all, Jesus was probably about as liberal as they got, short of denying the authority of the Scriptures. He was even accused of being a glutton and a drunk.
This *should* give liberals the world around cause for great rejoicing: the founder of the Christian faith was *one of them.* (For that matter, Paul was considered pretty liberal too: he dragged poor uncircumcised Timothy with him to Jerusalem to make a point about gentile Christians.) It should also give pause to Christian conservatives the world around, since it wasn’t really Jews who killed Jesus, per se, as it was conservatives. Nearly every person involved in Jesus passion was Jewish, pro and con, so you can’t say much about it, based on race. But the people who rigged the crucifixion were almost all conservatives.
But honestly, the “Jesus was a liberal” meme doesn’t help many traditional causes. You see, Jesus was a liberal, but he wasn’t a libertine. Here’s a working definition for “libertine:”
This means that, while Jesus was all for throwing out traditions made of men, he wasn’t too in favor of throwing out moral commandments given by God. Remember this quote?
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
If anything, Jesus was famous for upping the ante. “You have heard it said… but I say unto you…” Not once did Jesus take a moral law and make it lighter. There were a couple of times when he threw out extraneous foolishness, but never a time when he said something like, “actually, fornication’s not that bad, as long as you don’t get pregnant.”
Jesus wasn’t even all that tolerant. He was more likely to say “you’re all wrong” than “nobody’s wrong.”
You might even say that Jesus was in favor of capital punishment, since he practically rigged his own—refusing to defend himself, deliberately assenting to the most incriminating accusations…
The confusing thing for me is that, while Jesus was in fact a liberal, many of the people who currently *call* themselves liberals seem to be less liberal than libertines. In fact, if you cut out everything from the stereotypical liberal agenda that smacks of casting off moral restraint, what you have isn’t particularly liberal at all. It isn’t innovative. Not really. Those are the same positions that have been being held for, what, 50 years? I guess that’s better than sticking with the same positions as people 500 years ago, but (excepting areas of basic moral restraint) who thinks like the people 500 years ago? Even if we manage to come to a similar conclusion, the process of getting there is **way** more liberal for everybody, especially if you define “liberal” as simply “new.”
In all honesty, Jesus wouldn’t allow himself *ever* to be confined by someone else’s world-system. He had his own agenda, and it didn’t fit with anybody’s. He set his face like flint toward Jerusalem, because he had a mission to accomplish that could be performed by no other.
In short,
Don’t be co-opting the King of Kings,
Cause Jesus was a liberal, not a libertine.
EDIT: Incidentally, Eugene Volokh has some interesting things to say about liberals and morality at GlennReynolds.com
It has come to my attention that some people were refraining from commenting on the blog because they didn’t want their email addresses posted on the web for all to see. That was a problem in MovableType. It isn’t in WordPress. Emal addresses are not displayed in the comments section, only html addresses.
The email is still required though, but only for internal reference. I need to have some kind of attempt at a viable contact in case of people spamming my blog or inappropriate comments.
Thank you. That is all.
Blue stockings are sexy.
I supose this is really just another plug for a product, but it’s infinitely more important than Firefox.
I just finished reading a book for my Theology class by David Wells, a professor at Gordon-Conwell. The book is called *No Place for Truth,* Or *Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?* and I there’s a good chance that it ought to be required reading for every True Christian embarking on a path for ministry today. The basic premise of the book is that, in general, evangelical Christians, those of the heritage of the Reformers, the Puritans, the Methodists and the Charismatics, (and I suppose the Baptists too) have essentially lost their first love. Evangelical Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds recently, but they’ve accomplished this growth not by sufficiently challenging the surrounding culture, but by becoming enough like it that people find the evangelical Gospel acceptable to their social mores. For the most part, evangelicals have abandoned the knowledge of God (Theologos) and have replaced it with a kind of knowledge of man. The result has been that the Jesus we present has been dummed down enough that he’s finally acceptable to put on the shelf next to whatever other gods people have.
The first part of the book is a very difficult read, for several reasons. It consists of a scathing critique of modern evangelicalism, and a description of how and why we have abandoned our prior fascination with theology. Part of the difficulty with this part of the book was simply that it was written in 1993, just before the public started really gaining access to the internet. So a lot of his criticisms were just too outdated to make any sense to me. His discussions of how mass marketing and TV had inured our minds to thinking objectively were a bit amusing in light of RatherGate and the collapse of interupt marketing. The other thing that made it difficult is that I grew up pretty isolated from “modern culture.” I was in rural Oklahoma, and stupid wasn’t allowed in the house. You have to take that off and leave it on the porch. As a result, I haven’t ever really been aware of the broader evangelical culture, of which I seem inadvertantly to be a part. So some of his scathing criticisms seemed a bit off base. But then it occurred to me that, while *we* didn’t go to *those* sorts of churches, most nearly every other Christian we knew did. I had been fortunate, and unaware.
I do, however, have memories of people coming back to school from church and telling me that it had been prophesied: Revival was coming. Next tuesday. Be there.
But the second part of the book was well worth it. He describes the importance of Theology, why we need it, and what may likely happen to the church if we don’t get some of it out of the lofty universities and grounded in the actual church. While I wasn’t raised headlong in modern America’s “cliche culture” (to steal a line from the book), I was raised in a family with a pretty strong bias against formal education. Learning? All for it. But stay away from those schools: they’ll charge you an awful lot of money to give you a piece of paper, and you won’t really have gained much by it in the end. It’s a position I’m still inclined to agree with, much to Valerie’s chagrin. I remember when I got my English degree, the first thought that passed through my head was “now I finally know what it’s like to have a high school diploma.” *No Place for Truth* largely confirmed these inclinations. He points out that, while the church has lost it’s taste for rock solid truth, the university has lost its focus and understanding that the intended audience for theology (the persuit of the knowledge of God) is the church. If the church has no thorough concept of who God is and what he really wants from us, the church has very little reason for existence. And yet, even those people who point out the most adamantly that you have to know both the power of God **and** the scriptures, are pitifully ignorant of the scriptures in comparison to say, John Calvin. Incidentally, Wells also mentions that my current degree, the M Div, was a bachelors degree as recently as 50 years ago. It was “upgraded” officially to accord the same prestige to ministers that is given to doctors, lawyers, and MBAs, against the protest of older ministers who were stongly suspicious that there was a financial motive to adding an extra 4 years to the required education to get a theology degree. It was a gut-level sense that something like this was in place that persuaded me to drop out from school for three years, looking for the necessary theology education outside the accredited system. Honestly, it’s only because it didn’t work that I’m now back in school (still). My $30,000 in debt continues to persuade me that there was some financial motive in this “upgrade” to “professional status.”
The final chapter in *No Place for Truth* is the most impelling. Most of the book is written in academic style, with enough footnotes to choke a goat. But the last chapter is almost free of footnotes, and Wells speaks freely of his diagnosis: The evangelical church, progressing as it is, has become so much like the surrounding worldly culture that it is almost totally ineffective in making a true representation of Christ to the world. The salt has for the most part lost its saltiness. We aren’t changing the world nearly as fast as they are changing us. Even our revivals are pretty much human engineered, and so lacking the key ingredient to actually do what they’re supposed to do. We don’t need a revival: we’re lively enough as it is, and that liveliness has less to do with the actual presence of a holy God than it has to do with an engineered enthusiasm. What we need is a reformation.
I am inclined to agree. Granted, not every church in the world is soaked up by the world. Maybe your church is *the* church in your town that is preaching the true gospel, complete with a holy and awesome God who is sovereign, and wholly other and above the world. So was Martin Luther’s church, even before he nailed his 95 theses. This doesn’t negate the fact that the church at large has no clue, and it is continuing to persue the path of cluelessness.
David Wells’ prescription involves a renewal of the place of theology in the local church. That can’t be all of it, of course. God is still sovereign and has his own purposes. He also does nothing that he doesn’t first reveal to his servants, the prophets. Nevertheless, if you accept the premise that the knowledge of God is key to a functioning church, then a church that has no place for theology has surely left it’s center.
Restoring theology to its rightful place in church life could be a good start.
neumatikos 